Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (32 page)

Kim says the johns pay the guys $7.00 a room for 1/2 hour, $10.00 for an hour.

. . . Tyrone and Mike make their profits from drug sales, money paid by the johns, and from the sale of condoms to the girls and their dates.

Although the women in the hotel area were also subjected to violence, they stated the violence was not only from clients but often from fights with one another, since they were protected to some degree by bouncers in the hotels and were less likely to be dependent on male managers who could physically abuse them.

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The prostitutes in the hotel area were working in a circumscribed area on their own, and they all knew one another. Since they were not dependent on pimps, they were able to both trade information about and access services more easily.

African-American women in the hotel area were at high risk for HIV

infection. They frequently performed vaginal sex, a higher risk practice than oral sex. They were usually visibly high on crack when they were soliciting business, which may have discouraged condom use.

Similarities in Street Prostitution

As other studies have demonstrated, most of the women with whom we worked, regardless of race, drug, or location, were at high risk of violence and HIV infection, and they lacked essential services. All of these women were in need of drug rehabilitation and housing services. Although African-American sex workers were more likely than white prostitutes to be living with relatives, their housing conditions were often far from adequate. Many of the relatives subsisted on scarce resources. The white prostitutes generally did not have relatives with whom they were in contact, and thus they and their male partners seemed to have even more acute housing needs. Most of the prostitutes were also in need of financial assistance. African-American prostitutes had generally been on welfare more recently than white prostitutes, but many had had their benefits discontinued. At the time of the research, Pennsylvania’s General Assistance program for single low-income individuals lasted only 3 months, after which able-bodied individuals were cut from the program. At least some of the turbulence in these women’s lives stemmed from the fact that many who had begun to stabilize their lives with regular housing became homeless when their benefits were discontinued. Without job skills or other resources needed to find and keep a job, and with a drug addiction to satisfy, many of the women resumed prostitution. In addition, difficulties involved with applying for benefits may have deterred women who were eligible from reapplying once their benefits were canceled. Drug dependency, violence, and a shortage of available services, characterized the lives of most of these street sex workers in our sample, findings also observed in other cities.32

Differences in Street Prostitution by Race

The white prostitutes worked primarily in cars. Although they appeared to be generally sicker and in worse physical condition than the African-American
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prostitutes, this probably is a result of their long histories of heroin injection, although it may also have been related to their lesser degree of access to medical services. The white prostitutes were much less connected to or even aware of social and medical services than the African-American street prostitutes in general, including those African-American prostitutes in the park who also worked out of cars. For instance, many African-American sex workers used the local district health centers, but most white prostitutes did not even know where the centers were located. We observed a similar difference with respect to African-American and white sex workers enrolled in the major local drug detoxification program. Both groups of African-American women were more likely than white women to enter the program in this area, even though this particular 1-week residential program was closer to the white stroll area. In part, this may be due to differences in awareness of this service, in part to the white women’s reluctance or inability to leave their male partners, and in part to the fact that the white women were less likely to have medical insurance cards. The white sex workers were somewhat less likely to come from Philadelphia, were less likely to have children with whom they were in contact, and even if they came from Philadelphia, were less likely to have family networks on whom to rely for housing needs or links to welfare services. They tended to work to maintain their own drug habits or those of their male partners, and the primary relationship of many of them was with these men, not with other women. However, the relationship with males appeared to be altering somewhat with the growth of crack use among the white women.

African-American prostitutes were more likely to use crack as their primary drug than were white women and were less likely to be injection drug users. They were also more likely to be aware of services, and they networked with kin more than the white prostitutes did. Although some of the racial differences we saw (primarily in health or appearance) were related to the type of drug the women mainly used, the greater networking with kin and social services may be an effect of race, especially since African-American and white prostitutes differed in these aspects irrespective of their geographical location.

Several white prostitutes we saw come from the large ethnic Catholic community in Philadelphia. They may have been more ostracized by their families and isolated than the African-American prostitutes because of the hostility of this white community to what is perceived as “deviance.” We frequently observed extreme resistance and open hostility toward AIDS

educators in predominantly white welfare and job placement offices, which may indicate a denial of drug addiction and HIV infection in white, working-class ethnic communities. These factors discourage contact with family
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members who are drug addicted or work as prostitutes. African-American sex workers, however, appeared to be less rejected by their families, a finding suggested by other researchers.33 Although prostitution and drug use are condemned in African-American communities, there is also greater tolerance for deviance in low-income African-American communities. Residents’

preferences may be mainstream cultural preferences, but deviance may be more tolerated due to structural barriers faced by these populations in achieving mainstream goals. Someone who deviates may be less likely to be totally excluded from her family. Extensive networks of real and fictive kin in the African-American community have ensured survival in the face of poverty.34 Thus, compared to white prostitutes, African-American prostitutes may have multiple family roles as mothers, daughters, or sisters rather than more isolated roles as sex workers or addicts. In addition, kinship networks and contact with their children may ensure the women greater access to community services (see Table 7.1).

Differences in Street Prostitution by Location

Street prostitution varied not only by race but also by locale. The African-American women who worked in the hotel area had more services and support
TA B L E 7. 1 C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S O F S T R E E T P R O S T I T U T I O N B Y

L O C A L E

W H I T E

B L A C K P A R K

B L A C K H O T E L

P R O S T I T U T E S

P R O S T I T U T E S

P R O S T I T U T E S

Primary drug

Heroin (injection)

Crack cocaine

Crack cocaine

Primary work site

Cars

Cars

Hotels

Primary type of sex

Oral

Oral

Vaginal

Typical relation to males

Male partner

Male pimps

Work by

(1 man,

(1 man,

themselves

1 woman)

several women)

Family networks

No

Yes

Yes

Connection to social

No

Yes, somewhat

Yes, highly

services

connected

connected

AIDS prevention and

Needle exchange

Mobile vans

Individual

service outreach strategy

sites

outreach teams

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networks than the African-American car prostitutes in the park area and the white prostitutes underneath the El. The African-American women in the hotel area all seemed to be connected to services or at least knew where to get them. This may be because the hotel prostitutes had a closer network, protected each other, and were, as one of the male bouncers said, “like a family.” Because they were in regular contact with one another (the same prostitutes tended to use the same hotels, even if they did not live in them), information regarding services passed quickly through the street network.

Although the African-American women in the park area were less knowledgeable about services than the African-American women who worked in the hotel area, they were more knowledgeable than the white prostitutes who also worked out of cars and worked for men, perhaps because of the networking with kin in the African-American community.

Violence is commonplace in street prostitution. Although these women were exposed to violence on a daily basis, both white and African-American women who worked out of cars worked in more dangerous and less protected locales and were often exposed to violence not only from their clients but from the men for whom they worked. Women who worked in the hotel area and under the El were not in a formal pimping relationship, though they often informally gave money from prostitution to others. The white women were often in a relationship with a steady male partner who acted as a lookout, and they prostituted for drug money for both themselves and their partner. The African-American women in the hotels were in an informal relationship with male hotel staff and paid them for drugs or sometimes for rent, but they managed their own money. The only formal pimping structure we observed was among the African-American workers in the park, and may have been due to the unprotected and transient nature of the locale. Although we were able to speak with some of the partners or helpers of the white women and African-American hotel prostitutes, it was difficult to access the pimps in the park for information.

There were some similarities in locale across these areas. They were all low- income areas near or easily accessible to heavy traffic, more easily enabling the women to solicit customers. All of these areas also gave them easy access to drugs, since they were in or near locations of extensive drug sales.

The women worked in distinct areas by race, however, because of access to drug of choice as well as other factors. The white sex workers, whose primary drug was heroin, prostituted in a location which was in the major area of heroin sales in the city. Also, as one john told us, the presence of fast food establishments allowed the partners of some of these women someplace unobtrusive to take down license numbers of the cars that picked them up.

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The African-American prostitutes had easy access to crack sales in areas where they prostituted. The prevalence of very low-income and abandoned housing in the African-American neighborhood in which the hotels were located enabled the women to service their customers without attracting a great deal of attention from the police or neighbors. The African-American park prostitutes were close to the exit of a major highway, but the park provided the ability of workers to work in pimps’ cars with a degree of privacy that would not be possible on a city street.

P O L I C Y I M P L I C ATI O N S

It is important to understand the context and structure of street prostitution in order to better access street prostitutes, identify their needs, and link them to AIDS prevention and other services. Our ethnographic data suggest that strategies for AIDS prevention and service delivery for street prostitutes must be differentiated by context including race, type of drug use, and ecological location in North Philadelphia.

Delivery of services must be neighborhood based. Street outreach is an important strategy, because outreach workers know the characteristics of their constituencies, provide personal relationships, and bring information about accessible services directly to the women, as well as bringing them condoms and bleach to prevent HIV infection. Outreach workers are often the primary conduit to essential medical, drug treatment, and legal services for street prostitutes, since these women have a wide variety of needs beyond HIV/AIDS

prevention. Poverty, lack of marketable skills, and drug addiction help to push women into prostitution and put them at risk for HIV infection.

The social structure of prostitution in any given area must be identified to specifically design AIDS prevention outreach strategies for the population involved (see last row of Table 7.1). The white prostitutes in our sample were at the greatest risk of HIV infection because of their injection drug use. They were the most isolated from the services and from networks that could help them access services they desperately needed. Also, many were watched by their male partners or lookouts, which made it harder for them to talk with outreach workers, so they were often cut off from information on how to protect themselves or to access the services they needed. Providing services in the stroll area, either through the use of an outreach van or through a program such as needle exchange, is a viable way to reach these women. Even if women do not inject drugs, they can still acquire free condoms from the needle exchange sites. The needle exchange program that started during our research
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was located outdoors on a street corner in the stroll area. Prostitutes began using the program soon after it started. They received information about AIDS

and medical and social services at the site when they came to exchange needles, and over time they began to trust the volunteers. They frequently brought their male partners, who were often willing to talk to us, so it was possible to get information to both the woman and her partner.